§ Debates · Ch. 7 · Under the Cross
Should medieval Jewish history be told as a chain of persecutions?
2 positions · no single answer
Position A · held by Much traditional Jewish historiography, according to Salo Baron
The lachrymose view
Reads the Middle Ages as a succession of persecutions, from the Crusades to the Black Death, with Jewish society doomed from the start and ended by expulsions.
Rests on: p. 183
Where the debate comes up
Statements tied to the debate
- Salo Baron denounced the 'lachrymose' tendency in much Jewish historiography: the habit of reading medieval history as a chain of persecutions running from the Crusades to the Black Death, with Jewish society doomed from the start and finished off by a run of expulsions. The authors say this gloomy view fails to honor the long stretches of Jewish life and cultural bloom in medieval Europe.
- Violence, even extreme violence, did occur, and Christian hostility toward Jews must not be played down. But neither Jewish life nor Jewish-Christian relations can be boiled down to those disasters, and dwelling on the negative cannot explain why Christian Europe's Jewish communities would eventually form a larger share of world Jewry than those in the Islamic world.